William Smallwood

William Smallwood (1732-14 February 1792) was Governor of Maryland from 1785 to 1788, succeeding William Paca and preceding John E. Howard. Smallwood served as a Continental Army general during the American Revolutionary War, leading the 1st Maryland Regiment during the war.

Biography
William Smallwood was born in 1732 in Charles County, Maryland, and he was educated at Eton College in England. Smallwood served as an officer in the French and Indian War and later a state assembly member for Maryland, and in 1776 he was appointed the commander of the 1st Maryland Regiment when the American Revolutionary War broke out. The regiment distinguished itself in the New York-New Jersey campaign of 1776-7, having been wounded twice at the Battle of White Plains. Smallwood was opposed to serving under foreigners and gave a scathing account of Horatio Gates' command at the Battle of Camden in 1780, and he refused to serve under Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, returning to Maryland. From 1785 to 1788, he served as Governor of Maryland, and in 1787 he was among the state's delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Smallwood, who never married, owned 56 slaves and a crop of 3,000 pounds of tobacco at his Mattawoman estate, and he died in 1792.